Beyond the feeding tray

An original literary non-fiction-style account of watching birds from a neighbour's kitchen window.

My neighbour kept a notebook beside the kitchen window. She wrote down the birds that visited the feeding tray, adding a question mark if she could not identify one. I had come to return a bowl. Within five minutes, I was holding a pencil and waiting for something to land.

A bird touched the edge of the tray and immediately left. I asked whether that counted as a visit. She asked what I wanted the count to tell us. I had no answer beyond wanting a number to write. She said we could note what it had actually done and decide about totals afterwards.

Two larger birds arrived together. One stood on the fence while the other moved towards the food. My neighbour watched the bird on the fence. I watched the tray. When both disappeared, she asked whether I had seen where the second one went. I had been writing the first one's name, which I was not entirely sure I had heard correctly.

A child from next door knocked to ask for a ball that had come over the hedge. While we looked for it, he pointed to a bird in the tree. It had not visited the tray. I told him that we were counting the ones which did. He asked whether the bird knew that. My neighbour laughed and handed him the ball.

Before leaving, I drew a small map of the fence and tree beneath my list. The page looked less tidy than the earlier ones in her notebook. She asked me to date it and leave it there. We might notice something different from it tomorrow, she said.

What do you learn about the different approaches to observing the birds?